The present relates generally to an interface device, and more particularly to a device for interfacing between a data acquisition system operating at a first data transmission rate and a data processing system operating at a second and slower data transmission rate so that sets of data can be transferred from the data acquisition system at the first rate and accepted by the data processing system at the second rate.
It is often desirable to use microprocessor computing systems, such as PCs, XTs and ATs, with systems which acquire sets of data, such as spectrometers, so that the data can be easily processed as it is acquired. A frequent problem, however, is interfacing between the two systems since they often operate at different rates of transmission, with the data acquisition system usually acquiring the sets of data at a much faster speed (and often as larger sized words of data) than that at which the computing system can accept the data. The typical solution is to transmit and accept the data at the slower transmission rate in order to insure that data is not lost. However, this process tends to tie up the data acquisition system for an unnecessarily long time as data is being transferred to the data processing system.